Tied my first fly this morning. Went out for about 3 hrs. and caught a dozen gills. Hitting it so hard the destroyed the hackle. What a blast though. One thing to catch on a store bought flie another to catch on a flie that I tied myself. Just wondering if any one has any tips?

I may be scolded for recommending another site, but the fly tying instruction available at www.flyanglersonline.com is extensive and very thorough. It's how I learned. If you can, set up your tying station where you can see your monitor and scroll through the steps of tying a given fly. The beginner's section, may seem more trout-centric, but everything you learn will be useful.

On that hackle, I would assume the fly was something of the wooly-bugger type. A wire rib will help the hackle last much longer. The rib MUST be wrapped around the hook shank in the opposite direction from the hackle. You should be able to find illustrated steps to this process on FAOL.

Freezy Man,
Here is an article over Fly Tying that I found entertaining(see following link --scroll down to article) . I just picked up the Orvis Fly Tying 2005 Catalog. I'm going to have to start learning the art of Fly Tying myself so that I'm not spending millions on flies. Anyway, enjoy.
Thanks,
Terry

I've already tyed 2 flies myself. I think that if I can do it anyone can. The next one I tie though I'm going to incorpate some of the handy items I have around the house. My wife has horses so I'm going to tie in some horse hair and see how that looks. Just have to get some more thread and some wire. Want to try and tie a wooly bugger once I get some wire. Only wire that I've got around the house is solder and electric fence wire I know that the fence wire won't work not sure about the solder though. Has any tried it?

The electric fence wire is probably way too thick to be of much use. The solder is likely too big, but some is small enough to be useful for fly tyers. However, lead wire is generally used as weighting wrapped directly around the hook shank and then the fly is tied over that. Lead wire isn't all that strong and thus isn't the ideal rib.

You probably do have some ideal ribbing sitting around the house, you just don't know it. Find that corded old appliance (radio, iron, hair dryer) you just haven't yet gotten around to throwing out. Chances are that cord is made up of many strands of pure copper wire that should be nearly ideal for ribbing purposes. If you can find such an appliance, you'll likely have enough wire for years.

To keep Steve and myself out of trouble, I suppose I should point out that the appliance must be unplugged before any separation is done to any of its parts.

On the subject of copper wire, tons of thin copper strand can be found in transformers used on all sorts of electric equipment like radios, TVs, games, computers etc. It is generally very thin. (as Cliff said, unplug them first)
I gave up on using solder years ago except for very large, heavily weighted streamers (size 2 for instance). One reason is that most solder contains a chemical flux that is really nasty stuff.
I made flies for pan fish and bass out of dog fur for lots of years and caught plenty of fish on it. It was a free renewable source for "practice" flies and I suspect fine horse hair may work also. Of course if you have any bunnies.....

If you keep your eyes out, you will find all sorts of real and synthetic furs (stuffed toys for instance), feathers and other tying material just laying about. Maybe a family member is into embroidery, knitting, crocheting or any other type of craft project. Lots of these materials are good.